Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné 1941 – 1991 Volume 3 - Flipbook - Page 15
solo exhibitions
Art of This Century, New York,
October 1944, cat. no. 9.
c2
or destroyed (Arnason 1966a, p. 23).
But in fact, as he apparently forgot,
he had sold this collage in January
1946 (along with four drawings) to the
French art dealer Jeanne Bucher (1872–
1946), who had come to postwar New
York to see the work of the most promising younger American artists.
This collage is approximately the
same size as Pierrot’s Hat (c1), with
which it shares strong similarities in
materials and composition. The pasted
elements include a matchbook advertising Cuban cigars and pieces of colored
paper. Because this collage was kept
away from exposure to light for over
sixty years (Bucher, who died shortly
after her return to France, had slipped
it into a portfolio that was not opened
until 2005), it is in remarkably fresh
condition. It offers perhaps the
only accurate record we have of the
intensely colored magenta and yellow
papers Motherwell used during the
1940s, which are now faded in other
works, such as Joy of Living (c3),
Personage (Autoportrait) (c8), and
Mallarmé’s Swan (c11).
c3
Joy of Living
1943
Oil, gouache, pasted fabric, pasted
papers, crayon, charcoal, and ink on
paperboard
43½ x 33⅝ in. (110.5 x 85.4 cm)
inscriptions
Recto, upper right: motherwell 43
artist’s studio number
c43-5047
Watkins Gallery, American University,
Washington, D.C., 1963.
Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.,
1965, cat. no. 1.
Museum of Modern Art, New York,
Robert Motherwell, September 1965
(traveling), New York, cat. no. 3, illus.
p. 20; Amsterdam, cat. no. 3, illus. n.p.;
Essen, cat. no. 3; Turin, cat. no. 3, illus.
p. 63 (pl. 3).
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo,
1983 (traveling), cat. no. 5, color illus.
p. 56; shown in Buffalo only.
Baltimore Museum of Art, 2006.
present owner
The Baltimore Museum of Art.
Bequest of Saidie A. May, bma
1951.344
group exhibitions
Art of This Century, New York,
April 1943.
provenance
Saidie A. May, 1943; Baltimore Museum
of Art, 1951 (promised gift 1943)
Tate Gallery, London, 1946, cat.
no. 157.
Baltimore Museum of Art, 1943.
Watkins Gallery, American University,
Washington, D.C., 1953.
co lla ges
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